In No Man's Land
by jenni3penny
Summary: "He's losing his sense of direction and the only way to find north is the fact that he so completely knows the smell of her hair – and if he's got his face buried in that darkness he can keep his eyes comfortably closed and slope his fingers south. He can map this body in minutes... He's made her his favored reconnaissance..." Kate/Gibbs. Late S1. Possible sequel.
1. Chapter 1

He hadn't even heard what DiNozzo had actually said.

They were all a little second-winded and punch-drunk sleepless.

And frankly, he hadn't needed to hear anything they'd been babbling about in order to understand the scandalized glaring she's got aimed between their two desks, "You're disgusting, Tony."

"You're a prude." He points back at her playfully as he slants his chair, kicking his weight into his shoulders to disarm her accusation, "You really gotta lighten up."

"I have to - "

"Even Gibbs thinks you're a little too proper." Both DiNozzo's hands have clasped up behind his head but his exhaustion is evident in the way his shoulders are slumping out of attention, "Right boss?"

None of them have slept in too many hours over twenty four.

And neither of them had left when he'd damn well told them to.

So he forces patience through his teeth as he shakes his head and mutters, "I'm not a part of this discussion, DiNozzo."

She's ramping right past his deflection, her petite body looking sturdier than it should after thirty nine hours awake and he forces a blinking off watching the way she's unconsciously arming herself up beside her desk, "Gibbs understands that I can conduct myself as a respectable woman and still enjoy a whole lot of sex."

"Does he now?" The other man's voice arches loudly through the mostly emptied and early morning office, the tone of it so taunting that it leans toward comical.

"It was a hypothetical and not what I meant. Don't be an ass."

She's always sorta cute when she can't help but get a blush and flush defensive.

It makes the contrasting white and black she's wearing look prettier on her skin tone.

"I've always been under the impression you enjoy sex, Kate." He aims them both quieter by barely murmuring the comment in her direction, intentionally keeping his face near passive as possible, "Or you would if you'd relax for five minutes."

Red light. _That there, that was a bright dying star of a 'red light', Jethro._

But goddamn it to hell – they started it. And he's sure as shit gonna finish this line of conversation right here and now.

Because he cannot wade too much farther into it with the way her white skirt slopes her trim waist and thighs just staring him in the face like that. And, generally, the appropriate girl that still thwacks the mental ruler on her own knuckles cannot bring herself to publically tip this close to burning and not blush.

But he's surprised when one of her hands arches her fingers to her desk and her hip flares as the other hand rests into it, her brow arched into a sudden wide-eyed-awake cheekiness as unguarded and completely unexpected mischief brings a smile to her lips.

"Not sure a whole five minutes would be worth it, Gibbs." Her smile is positively chippy and it's got a near smirk stubbornly tugging the corner of his mouth as Tony's unheard of silence gapes over them.

_That mischief, Katie Girl. It's your better angel. _

_Keep it close and it'll serve you well._

He simply shrugs suddenly aching shoulders as he turns back into his computer, unable to let go of the smugly upper-hand smirk she's got on her lips, "I make it worth it."

It was a matter of pride - that's what he tells himself into their surprised silence.

Especially considering Tony's roped him into the discussion regardless of the fact he just doesn't want to go leaning anywhere near it with her still in his line of sight.

Really, though, it's just because she gets so damn adorably flustered when he publicly reminds her that he is a man - and still decidedly alive from the neck down.

* * *

"You bait him, Kate." He tells her softly.

He's unabashedly grinning the words out from behind her, amused by the fact she can't save herself from being self-righteous when Tony's being obnoxious. They've got this double dance down. It's comfortable and, in a certain way, when they're thin-stretched, comforting. Their bickering has become a sound to him that is silvered in its ringing, something that hums like a household appliance – ever present and so domestically normal that it becomes intrinsic. Unnoticed unless silenced. He mostly appreciates the fact that the two of them uphold that homage to the familial and most especially in the worst of times. Especially when they're tired and ragged and near unconscious.

Kate turns him back a quick glance in the elevator, her features smoothed so that it seems as though she has no idea what he's referring to, "How so?"

She's full of it and he can tell. He can always tell. She completely knows that.

"Into saying chauvinistic things." Gibbs exhales it over her shoulder, watching the hard cock of her jaw as she aims her ear closer to his words, "You bait him just so that you can slap him down."

She doesn't turn this time, her head forward as she loosely lifts her shoulder and drops her jaw to angle toward it, "You jealous, Gunny?"

_No, not in the least. Except, yes, goddamn it. _

It's official. She's lost her nimble little mind to exhaustion.

Because it sure as hell sounds like she's making this less a clinical discussion of another agent and far more like… it's a brazen tease. She's teasing him beyond what's normal and far beyond the way she taunts at DiNozzo. There's a tipped humming in her voice that says this is private and personalized and intentionally made especially for him.

She has completely, utterly, absolutely _lost_ her goddamn mind.

"No." He says, as though the slip of his former rank off her perfect lips didn't make his gut drop hot and his jaw flex up, "You know I won't bite."

"Invalid." Kate just shrugs at him and her hair shifts ever so slightly forward to hide the spot on her jaw he's been unconsciously fixated on. "Your argument is invalid, Gibbs."

Near surprise at her sharp and assertive retort has him leaning away from her, letting his back lay into the elevator wall, creating a purposeful distance, "In what way, Agent Todd?"

"It's just… the bigger the fish, the stronger the bait and reel a girl's gotta use."

He blinks surprise into the cocked and curled smile she suddenly turns his way and he can't help but recognize that his lips are parted for air as she steps forward through opening elevator doors and into the garage.

* * *

He realizes how sleepy she truly is when she crashes most of an evidence retrieval kit to the floor and he can silently agree that he's not really all that wide awake himself, dragging tiredly down to help her piece things back into the case with slow reaching hands.

"Don't bait me, Kate." He murmurs over the dip of her head, letting his hands hang loose, wrists to his knees while he studies how silkily dark her hair looks in this lighting.

"Why?" She's watching his laxed hands and he unconsciously flexes his fingers into the quiet bite of her tone, "Your rules?"

He's not entirely sure why they've so quickly shifted from teasing to traitorous but the grazing of her voice puts him on an edge, "You breaking rules is what got you here, remember?"

"No, you got me here. You break rules every day of your life." Her hands are faster that they'd been before as she messily dumps the last of the kit together, "Why's this one so sacrosanct, huh?"

"Don't bait me," His voice hedges low and staccato into the way he wipes the words against the crown of her head, "Caitlin."

And the inhalation she takes only spurs his lips back against her hair in the opposite direction, "Why?"

_Because I like you innocent. Stay that way. _

"I'll take you under." He's paused into the assessment, self realization making it a little bitter before he forcefully lifts his head away from the smell of her hair.

When she looks up, she looks just like the first Kate he'd met – the one that was a feisty and fierce threat to more than just his patience, "That a threat?"

At first he's startled that their thinking is sometimes still so strategically similar.

And then he remembers that's probably why he'd offered her a job in the first place.

Because he'd seen something in her he couldn't lose. It would have disappeared into the pathways of the District and he may not have been able to hunt it down again.

"It only takes a few minutes to drown." He watches her eyes brighten farther awake as she takes in his words, "Ask any sailor."

"Gibbs - "

A grunted negation breaks off the beginning of whatever argument she's about to make, "And once you stop fighting, really? Seconds."

She purposefully draws herself up with a balanced precision on high heels that subtly impresses him, lifting the kit onto the table and shunting it hard and loud and making her wearied frustration clatter echoing throughout the bay. He watches the lay of her palms against the table, her hips banking back as she shakes her head and he uses his hands against crackling knees to draw himself up to her side. He watches her profile, leaning as close as he usually had a habit of doing, forcing her shoulders higher because he despises when they dip low. She just turns a tired glance of hazel at him and shakes her head like he's her very first decisive disappointment.

And then she smiles and he watches it break brighter in affection, an attempt at reparation, "You've got five minutes to prove it."

_Well, goddamn… good girl. You truly are a devil too. _

_Welcome to No Man's Land, Caitlin Todd. _

_Breathe shallow and keep your shoulders loose._

Because it's the absolute last response he could expect out of her. Which, in his estimation, maybe makes it the absolute best. Maybe he's losing it too - because he damn near bends her farther forward and runs his hands up her stacked ribs to catch along her breasts while he tastes the warm skin on the back of her neck. Catches himself leaning into the way she sideways watches the whole stretching shift of his chest.

Instead he closes his eyes and brackets his hands to the table at her sides, lets his head drop forward to the back of hers to keep her stop-still even as he speaks, "You heard me, Todd."

"I heard you." Kate admits into dropping her eyes closed, driving her head back insistently into the way he's pressing intimidation into her because it's his perpetually first wave of defense (offense?) in any situation.

"Go home and get some sleep." He's curbing his voice under control and there's no lingering of any particular emotion, "Your judgment is questionable."

She leans farther forward and away from him on a huffed noise, "Seems it is."

"Oh, I don't mean in your execution." Suddenly he seems just as worn out weary as he really should, his face slackened gray as he leans back into the table beside her, "I mean in your quarry."

"You're nobody's quarry, Gibbs." It actually softens him to see and hear how she's proud of the sentiment and sullen by it all at once. "And I'm not a predator. I'm not that kind of woman. Tony could obviously tell you that."

"Kate - "

"I'm pretty tired." She laughs it off like it was all innocent, just shakes her head conspiratorially like they'd been playing a poor man's hand of poker.

Nothing at stake, really. No bets to make.

_Thank Christ. You've got me skint broke already, woman. _

She looks simultaneously mortified and somehow awkwardly settled – as though she'd hated the gambling process but she'd had to make the play to know the end. "Too tired."

"Want me to drive you?" He hadn't meant to make it hurt but he can see so instantly that it does. Her hurt tends to live in her eyes and the shifting color around her pupils, he's visited her with pain often enough to know the welcome mat.

"Not that tired." She tells him with a tone that betrays a little bitterness, an obvious distaste for his infuriating tendency to be soundly over-protective and completely hands-off at once.

"Kate - "

"Do we have to do this?" It's the closest she's going to get to pleading and he chalks it up to her defenses being battered by exhaustion because, otherwise, she's seemingly happy when scrapping with him, "Because… I'm just - "

"You're exhausted." He supplies the white flag for her, lifts it between them with a cocked smile.

"Completely." She nods a jerked gratitude back.

Gibbs exhales into watching her, "Let me drive you home."

She shakes her head negatively so very slowly, so innocently sympathetic to how back and forth the both of them are. It's like she can simply stand back and see the entire situation for what it is, then guiltlessly step back into it. He should be able to do that – and he can't sort why, in the middle of this moment, he just fucking _can't_.

At least, he can't sort it out until he meets her eyes.

And she's more than tired, she's more than sad… She's completely embattled.

Which doesn't make a damn bit of sense to him – because he's the one that's suddenly hooked up by the throat.

She has no idea that she's equal to an invasion – a sort of unavoidable endgame. "Good night, Gibbs."

_Good night, sweetheart. Sleep well._

"You did it anyhow." He's waited and watched her hips and wondered it out loud when she's already halfway across the bay, seemingly physically unable to just let her go, "I told you not to."

"What?" A lack of sleep and motivation plays into the way she just swings back around on him, her usual attention to rank and professionalism so shredded up that she is simply, completely, just a vividly and beautifully frustrated woman. "I'm walking away, right? Isn't that the right answer? Go home? Pretend everything's normal? That's what you want."

"Kate - "

"That's what you need." She's veering close to angry, at least as angry as she'll show him these days, "To feel right in your superiority because that just might justify keeping distance. To feel like you have control of this."

"Of what?"

"Of whatever the hell this is." There it is. That sure quick strength and self righteousness that tends to rear up when she thinks she's right and he's wrong.

"What was it with Kerry?" His voice hashes low and verging on accusatory, "You've done this before."

"I have never," The surprise of her flat palm forcefully slapping center line into his chest is something he's not going to forget for awhile, because it takes a pretty mighty set of balls to shove a Marine, and especially this particular one, "never done _this_ before."

He can't ignore her hand or the implication that she's lending more weight to this '_this'_ than any other – and he can't decide if he finds it endearing or terrifying.

Except, really, not much terrifies him anymore. At least, he forces it not to. Mostly.

So maybe it's just endearing, or maybe _it's damn adorable_, "Then let me take you home."

She's got a feral smile sometimes, one that prowls, "Not happening, Gunny."

She can't keep saying it like _that_.

In fact, she's gotta stop saying it at all or he's just gonna tongue the word right off her pissy little lips.

He lets a little grit and growl back in her direction, keeping his tone low, "You keep saying that like you have a right to."

"I do." Kate tosses back so perfunctorily that he questions whether or not she actually does as she turns a shoulder to him.

But, no… but, "Why?"

"Because you like it." He realizes as she flings back that maybe it's the most furious and feisty and ferocious she's been with him since she started laying slaps across his chest within the first week of them meeting, "And I can tell."

He doesn't actually argue with that. Doesn't actually want to.

Because he respects the fierceness of her surety too much to lie in the face of it.

"I'm not stupid, Gibbs. And I'm tired of pretending."

He thinks that she should be told, some day, that she's completely wrong in her own assessment of her personal capabilities when it comes to stalking a sort of prey. Because she has him so narrowly pinned that he can't help but watch how interestingly arresting the hunting process is on Kate Todd. How lithe and nimble and easy she makes it seem. She was well trained before he'd put hands to her career and started shifting her sense of life direction. She'd been yanked and pulled and dragged through enough rigorous training that when she'd mentioned shooting him shortly after meeting him, he'd nearly instantly gotten aroused.

_Any-damn-time, gorgeous. Your sidearm or mine?_

Because that hadn't been a threat, not in the least. That had been a full on flirt.

But that had been when she was more, say, available.

"I'm tired." Actually, she's beyond that and it makes him feel momentarily guilty for working her and the rest of the team over. Except this sort of guilt is usually a fleeting thing and she's proven she can take this job on.

It's him that she has to guard herself around. He's tiring her.

"Exhausted." He agrees. "Lemme get you to bed."

"Just sleep." It's not a question she gives him with an arched look, but an order. Somehow she's re-assessed the situation and found a median line, a stability in her emotions and their situation that she can live with – even if it's just temporarily. However, she's not the one giving orders around here. At least, she's not supposed to be.

"Just sleep." Gibbs agrees softly anyhow, confused as to how his hand got close enough that he's brushing the pad of his thumb against the waistline of white, fingers stretched along her pelvic bone.

She smiles even as she leans into the wiping comfort of the touch, "How's my judgment now?"

"Still impaired." He snorts a low chuckle, nodding but keeping his eyes from hers, "But better."

It's a sudden stillness when she curls her hand against his wrist, forcing his stretched fingers unmoving and drawing his head marginally up even if he still can't look at the color of her eyes, "You want more of me."

"Yes, I do." _I want all of you._ "Doesn't change reality."

"Can I tell you something?" Her fingertips are running the inside of his wrist just behind his watch and it's unexplainably sexy and too personally intimate all at once.

"Sure." He lets her keep doing it anyhow, because as annoying as he pretends to find it, it's making his fingers curl in pleasure.

"One of these days?" Her lips rise along his cheek and he stubbornly lifts his jaw into it, pressing into the way she's whispering so that she's gotta leave it on his skin or pull away, "Five minutes isn't gonna be enough."

_One of these days a whole year isn't gonna be enough of you. _

"Time me." He nods so starkly that she's confused, blinking as though she just doesn't comprehend the English language anymore.

"What?" She's obviously surprised by the harsh shunt of his palms, the force of his thrust driving her hips back into the edging of the table as he steps up into her space and leans.

"Start the clock. And don't lose track."

She slumps less than gracefully into the way he tugs at her waist but he finds it sort of cute in its sleepiness, the lethargic but trusting way she just lends her body into his pulling. He draws her jaw up while watching her face, turning his fingers up under it so that he can aim her head up and over his shoulder toward the clock on the wall behind him. She's got fingers in his shirt and her lashes suddenly flutter her eyes wider in some sort of comprehension and he can't keep from grinning as he leans his mouth close to the line of her jaw.

"You watching the clock, Kate?"

He's pretty sure she's just shivered under his pressing, could feel it settle, "Yes."

And he grins as he keeps watch over the expectant lax of her features, "You should probably have your eyes open then."

"Bastard." It sounds so nice coming off her, though. Like praise or a whispered worship.

He's losing his sense of direction and the only way to find north is the fact that he so completely knows the smell of her hair – and if he's got his face buried in that darkness he can keep his eyes comfortably closed and slope his fingers south. He can map this body in minutes, trajectory and terrain have already been perused, scoped, studied. He knows his best vantage points. Has them filed in his memory, previously unused. However, observantly catalogued, intentionally tracked. He knows exactly where to go to bring her down. He's made her his favored reconnaissance since the day she'd walked into his office still a member of the Secret Service and inexplicably drawn an otherwise unheard of 'please' off him.

"You're a bastard." The guttering rasp of her voice gives him a small smile, knowing he's got her off balance, "I thought - "

"I told you not to bait me." He bites the words out staccato into her cheek, letting a little threat lay into the tone before he softens his mouth along her jaw, "Little over four minutes?"

"Mmm."

"You did it anyhow though, didn't you?" He lets his fingers flex tight from her jaw to her throat, wiping downward as his thumb presses her chin higher, letting himself darken the color of his eyes on her as he watches her submission to the movement, "Eyes open, Todd. Pay attention."

"I am." She blinks away from the clock and the sheer surprised innocence in her eyes rakes on him, so wide and brashed more copper than brown.

She's got a smile, though. One that says she knows him better than he thinks she probably should. She's too young and bright-wide-eyed for him to touch. She shouldn't be wise enough to understand this, to understand the edges of him, but somehow she's managing. It's a smile that says she already knows he's going to lay his mouth down hard on hers and she meets his tongue with a lashing of her own.

She lets him kiss her angrily, lets him start it with some sort of pent frustration.

She makes it so much softer, though. Leads it long, slow, and gentler than he'd began.

_That's my girl. Been looking for her everywhere._

"How long do I have?"

Hell, how long's she been profiling him? Working up a modus operandi? Letting her circling thoughts peg him down, facet by facet by turning glances? Since the very damn beginning, he knows. Since she'd found herself penned in between him and Fornell and unexplainably chosen his flippant smart-assery over the other man's affability. Tobias could have easily charmed her his way, drawn her into an agreement with the FBI rather than NCIS – it's not like the other man was socially inept. Not like he couldn't sweet talk a deal and a half with some sugar on top. Jesus, Diane had proven that.

But she'd settled on him instead. Taken him up on his offer before Fornell could even make one. Maybe that'd been her first mistake and not her dalliance with Kerry, choosing him over Fornell. Letting him lean on, over and around her. Maybe he never should have offered her the job and maybe she'd be at the Hoover Building now instead of getting groped by her boss after he'd overworked and underslept her.

"Kate - "

She shakes her head sharply at the sound of his own questioning, like she's already read and re-read his thoughts. "Two minutes."

She suddenly sounds so assured and he finds himself smiling relief into how calmly unwavering she is as her spine arches, her head slackening back a little to her shoulders as he strokes his palms against her breasts and fingers fabric. He rolls her nipples between thumbs and forefingers, feeling the pull of her bra and smiling into the way it leads her chest arching into him before he fully palms her breasts. He leans a swipe of his tongue up the perfumed tang of her throat, grating a groan through his teeth and letting it vibrate just under her ear before he nips his teeth against her.

"Plenty of time." He's gotten her skirt twisted up higher on one thigh than the other just because he wants to draw her leg onto his hip and he grunts appreciation when she doesn't just let him pull up against the back of her knee, she moans into the calloused pads of his fingers rising higher on her thigh. "You drowning yet?"

He can feel her ass tighten under his touch as his hand lends between two fabrics and he jerks her closer, "No."

His glaring thins a little into her stubbornness and he fights the twitch of a proud smirk, watching her eyes flick a challenge from the clock to him and back as her jaw rises.

"Little liar." Gibbs murmurs and shifts his fingers under dry cleaned fabric, stroking the top of her thigh with intentional slowness before his thumb angles pressing against the fabric of her underwear.

Christ, she moans like he's already inside her. Like he's already found a way to own the inches of all of her. The sound of it should be considered classified – because he's positive that he doesn't want anyone else to have access to it. He wants that sound buried in his throat, laying on his tongue, bitten into his shoulder, wiping anywhere she can reach with her lips.

He's not necessarily surprised that she's a little damp, and he can't really blame her. Because he's damn hard as he turns his mouth into her cheek, tipping his hand so that he can rub slow and methodically pressured traces against the crotch of her panties, kissing against her cheekbone as he studies her downed lashes.

"Open your eyes, Kate." The moaned noise that keens off her comes from lower in her throat than expected and he grins as her lashes flutter back open upon demand, her jaw lifting into watching the forgotten clock.

"Keep breathing." He bedroom whispers it right in front of her ear right before he traces a fingertip up under the hem and wipes on wetness, pushes against her with the complete weight of him while he hooks his finger deeper between her legs. He simultaneously loves this exact trimly tailored skirt and despises how the bridging of it keeps her thighs from spreading farther open for him. Because, at this point, he damn well knows she would if she could. The deathgrip she has on his upper arms is just one scrap of evidence to that fact.

"Gibbs." He knows he's outta time, outta line – doesn't keep him from roughly swiping his thumb across her clit just once, "Stop."

She's completely breathless but her lungs are full and he leans farther forward a moment before flexing his fingers and drawing them off of her, twisting them up and into hanging viced from the dark fabric of her shirt. It suddenly feels like his fingers are on-fire-aching. He leans an angling into the way her knee is still pressed up along his hip and he smiles into wiping unintentional wrinkles from the fabric of her shirt, righting the buttons straighter and perpendicular toward the bunched fabric of her skirt. When he looks up she's watching his movements with a sweetened softness that reminds him of her coffee, light brown and all sugared sweet.

He can't help a boyish grin, squeezing her knee as it starts a downward slide on his leg, "Was it worth it?"

She flexes her arms straight against the cool metal of the table, leveraging her upper weight back into it as she toes her high heel back onto her foot and he can't help watch the arch of her calf to the bend of her ankle, "I'm not exactly sure yet. I need more time."

Gibbs nods once, "I'm taking you home."

"Uhkay." Kate's shoulders shrug so simply and acceptingly, like she'd expected nothing different from beginning of the day before to this particular end.

"With me." He lands it quietly in her hair, lets his hands close her up into his chest like she's a small thing he can protect for a little while. It tugs on something unexplainable in his gut, tugs harder down in his thighs.

"I figured."

He lets himself wipe at her hair once before forcing his hands back down along her arms, fingers squeezing her more coherent, "For sleep."

She nods her face into his shirt, the slight height of her fitting her up against him so that she can wipe her cheek onto his chest. "Just sleep."

"I didn't say that. Not 'just'." He shrugs away from her, already shifting them apart so that he can shut off some of the lower lighting, letting his steps echo as she searches over the table before looking back to him, "For sleep."

"You said 'just' earlier." The brunette moves to follow him, leaning her shoulders forward first into the movement and letting her steps slowly bring them back together as he pauses at the elevator keypad.

Gibbs just shakes his head into a near grinning, exhaling slowly without pressing farther into it, "What'd I tell you about baiting me?"

"Don't do it." She chirps up at him mischievously, "And then you rewarded me for doing it anyhow."

Like she's more than a little proud of bending-into-breaking the rules, of being frighteningly like him. Sometimes following his rules meant snapping them in half and scattering the pieces. It's a tautological cycle, he knows. But if they, she, can't trust herself to know which rules are breakable and which aren't then they were in some serious trouble.

If he couldn't trust himself to break this rule, he was in some serious trouble.

Because he's stuck still. Either he's moving forward or he's retreating.

"Gibbs?"

Only duplicitously smart men or cowards retreat. He fancies himself as neither.

"You baited me anyhow." He repeats softly, blinking a wealth of pleased astonishment into her watching.

She gives him a sleepy smile and lifts her hand into reaching like she's known this was the ultimate ending since he'd said the word 'sex' and her name in the same sentence with DiNozzo as witness. "Yeah, I did."

"Kate - "

"I'm tired, though." Her eyes soften on him as her head angles, fingers stretching out to rest along his wrist. "It can wait til tomorrow. Or next week. Or whenever."

_Don't you dare say 'never', you little fox. _

She's giving him an emergency exit end, in the event that his blood flow has actually made it back to circling through his brain rather than just his dick.

It's cute, sorta sweet even, but completely unnecessary.

"That wasn't meant as a reward." He lets her fingers stay wrapped on one arm while the other hand dips his pocket for his keys, jangling them between their pressing so that she realizes his intent in unchanged, "It was supposed to be a punishment."

There's obvious surprise in the way she lifts her head to accept the kiss he wipes onto the corner of her mouth, "Coulda fooled me."

He lets his lips own the spot just before her ear, "Next time I'll make it more obvious, Agent Todd."


	2. Chapter 2

"What?" She's watching him with an unexplainably affectionate smile – one that she generally saves for when she doesn't think he's paying attention to the turning of her head.

Gibbs just lets the chuckle off his throat, shaking his head as he focuses on the deserted road again, palming the wheel as he shrugs. "You're stubborn."

"Yes, I am." There's a sweetened up valving of laughter in her throat that nearly hums into appreciation. "How so?"

"Just go to sleep." He banks her a glance quickly, letting his eyes scatter over the way her head is turned long and lingering against the headrest. "Get rest where you can."

_It's a foxhole life, sweetheart. Trench nap. _

"I can't." Kate murmurs, her hand lifting into the space between them, fingers hesitating into the sudden jerk of his jaw at the movement.

Damn it, he couldn't help it.

She actually has him nervous. Twitchy. A slight twinge cagey.

"And why is that?" He intentionally drops his shoulders relaxed and bites on the smile that pulls at his lips as she wipes her fingers gently against the sleeve seam of his jacket, her palm sloping the upper sleeve before it drops raggedly back into her lap.

"You'll think too much if I don't keep distracting you."

He lifts his head understandingly into her assertion, "And change my mind?"

"Mmm hmm." Kate sounds it off slowly and quietly, the noise dwelling warmly between them. "You seem to forget that I know you."

"You don't know me as well as you think you do, Agent Todd." He roughs out between them, navigating a turn with one palmed shift of his hand on the wheel.

"And, yet, still more than you'd like me to." She smugly shrugs her glance out the window and he can't help but feel comforted by how eased he is by her in the seat beside him.

"Don't profile me, Kate." He shakes his head slowly as he takes another turn, letting his body relax farther into the seat.

A laugh comes off her lips that starts in her throat and stays more breathy than he expects, "Too late."

"Started on Air Force One, didn't you?" He's grinning into it, keeping his eyes on the road even as he realizes that she's been in the car long enough that the scent of her has become a very part of the enclosed environment.

It's why he likes using the truck.

She's been in it enough that it inherently clouds the smell of her around him.

"It wasn't Air Force One. It was - "

"Alpha Foxtrot 2900." He interrupts with a lazed tone, bringing her head swinging back toward him with a widened smile. "Didn't you?"

"Yes."

He nods amusement into her strict adherence to select security measures, "And you vetted me before you let me anywhere near the President."

The shifting of her draws his attention briefly away from a road he could run while ragged and he smiles into the way she's nearly cradled and turned in the seat, "You're goddamn right I did."

"You vetted me." He blinks back to the road on a nod.

"Completely." The twitch of control that curbs her tone makes his head angle in a subtle suspicion.

"Full background check." Gibbs doesn't ask it. He knows it.

"More than. Multi agency access." Her voice strikes defensive as he takes the last turn before his driveway, letting off the gas as he forces himself to exhale. "How could I not, Gibbs? It was my job. My responsibility."

His shoulders feel tight again, unrelentingly knotted up in wariness, "And Fornell? My team?"

"Yes."

"But you're a good Agent, a good woman. Respectful. Compassionate." Gibbs lets it breathe out of his lungs as he shakes his head, sighting the driveway as he lets the vehicle idle even slower. "You don't tell them that you know where they graduated or what their SAT scores were?"

"Of course not. That's personal or classified information." He can hear the nervousness on her, like it's something she's extremely uncomfortable wearing. "Tony's full of shit when he tells the football injury story, by the way."

"I know that." The turn into the driveway is hard and tight and he catches the way her fingers rise into the window frame as she leans away from him. "You vetted me. All the way back. Multi agency access and more than a background check."

_Shit_. Shannon and Kelly.

"Yes, I did."

_God damn it, Shannon and Kelly. _

"Instant recall of pertinent information but you keep it locked down. You pretend you don't know." He's letting the words go stagnantly, letting them lull between them like a middling accusation as he jerks the car into park. "You're a double agent."

"Sometimes." She confesses.

Gibbs nods into the briefness of her tone. "You pretend you don't know."

"I do."

Distinctly single syllable answers are actually pissing him off. She's reverse interrogating him, deflecting and driving the information all at once. He very suddenly realizes that she's a better student than he'd dreamed she possibly could be. Because she's not only grasped some of the subtly finer points of a Gibbs-ian interrogation system, she's damn well adapted them. He's always been of the opinion that she's one of Darwin's finer examples of evolutionary excellence – she doesn't need to rub it up in his face.

Strike that, belay – he was fairly sure having her rubbing anything up into -

"Gibbs."

He stalls her interruption of his thoughts with his own wearied and rasping tone, fingers angry as he shuts the engine down, "Kate - "

"I know nothing." She banks sharply into the otherwise odd quietness of the vehicle, fingers lifting enough to draw his attention to her small hand. "Not really. Just facts. Just dates, numbers."

He nods slowly, a spike of almost pain shafting from his tensed jaw to the base of his skull, "You slipped up, though. You told DiNozzo I'd had four wives."

"And you corrected me in front of him." Her voice lends so soft, so hesitantly cool even as he bites down harder and shakes his head toward the driver's window. "You lied."

"It wasn't…" He forces all the air from his lungs like he's about to submerge everything, let it sink while staring out a darkened window. "You let me lie."

"Yeah, I did." She's watching him with darkly pinned eyes when he looks back, the same excruciatingly pretty way she'd once looked at him like she wanted to put a round in his shoulder, knee, whatever was close and damn painful.

"Caitlin."

"I know nothing." Kate murmurs on a slow shake of her head, her features forced intentionally blank. "Just numbers."

He jerks his seatbelt undone with a quick shake of his head, "We're done with this."

"I figured we would be by the time we'd gotten here." There's a resolve in her tone, a new leveling up to seriousness that slants controlled. "Guess I should've slept. Miscalculation on my part, huh?"

She seems disappointed, but not devastated.

As though she's been patiently expecting him to alter whatever arrangement they've been cradling between them since he'd shoved her back into that table and pressed on her.

"I meant the discussion." Gibbs leans into her tightly, nodding once into the way her head doesn't shift from staring at the front of his house.

"No, you didn't." Kate argues sharply, her shoulders suddenly jacking into tightness as his hand slips along her side to pop the seat belt, her head finally turning accusatorily in his direction. "You meant all of it."

"You don't know all of me, Kate." His fingers tighten up where he's clipped her jaw still, letting his own flex before he lays a sharp kiss against her surprised and still lips. "You just know some numbers. Get outta the car."

* * *

Well… now she's just intentionally, blatantly, smart-assedly baiting him. Because his favorite (perfectly-worn-in-thread-bare) flannels are tied up round on her hips. And they're still just delightfully loose enough to sling low on her pelvis. The tank is vaguely familiar and he's pretty sure probably came out of her back up gym stuff before they'd even left the office. It's tight and lean and unapologetically curves on her – and he unapologetically appreciates it long enough for her to realize he's doing so. The cocked glance she gives him brings up a grin and he gives her a lazy shrugging in return.

"I said the top drawer." Gibbs lingers back against his counter, fingers gripped up into the damp dish rag as he lets his glance wander down the full stretch of her.

"You said there were shirts in the dresser."

"And followed up with 'top drawer'." He corrects with a low leveled tone.

"Must not have heard you." Her shoulder lifts and he's completely aware that she thinks - correction - she knows she's something akin to adorable when she smirks like that.

_Dear Dimples, you stop that shit. Right now. _

And she smiles deeper, like she knows he can't help watching it evolve, "Are you aware that there's a Beretta in your sock drawer?"

He launches another grin over the table, leaning forward so that he can toe the chair out a fraction, the scraping sound catching up in the otherwise quiet kitchen, "Can't imagine where that came from."

"Your back-up throw away is a Beretta and not a Sig? Where's the clip?" Kate asks as she watches his hands, his movements, waiting for him to sit.

She's surprised when he aims for the chair and then waves his fingers in her direction instead of shifting into it. She accepts the offer though, curling slowly into it as he tosses the towel to the counter. Her knees draw up instantly into her chest, arms loose against them in a fashion that makes her look even smaller than expected. At least until she flexes bare shoulders and rolls her head back against them with a long breathed groaning. All he wants to do is touch her. Instead he grabs the warmed cup from the counter and settles it in front of her, noting the scrutinizing glance she's tipping on him at the movement.

"Not telling you." He murmurs as he aims it center point to the table directly in front of her, sliding it closer as she lifts her shoulders straight into his downward shifting. "Those are my pants."

"I needed pants." She shrugs her hands around the cup and he watches the curl of her fingers and shoulders and the forward sifting shift of her hair as she groans her face into the steam of chamomile.

"I've seen your legs." He aims over her quietly, letting the words haze down over the crown of her head, lifting his fingers to catch the slope of her hair to wipe it back. "And you don't sleep in pants."

She smiles forward into the edge of the cup like she's sharing a secret with her tea at his expense and he catches it in his peripheral, "I do if they're comfortable."

_Keep your damn hands to yourself, Gunny._

"And these are pretty comfy."

_Ah, screw it. God hates a coward. _

He slopes his palm along the side of her neck and watches the way she lifts her head preening into the full stretch of his fingers, her throat constricting under the pressing as she lets her head lean back long, "You mean you do if it's gonna annoy me that you pawed through my drawers."

She's angling her head into keeping his palm pressed still as he curves up along the back of her and the chair, the other hand flat along the table, "I haven't gone near your underwear, Agent Gibbs."

He growls his smile into the darkness of her hair, catching the subtle shift of her head into his as he lets the sound heat against her. His palm stretches down along her collarbone, keeping her back straight and sure and tight to his front as he angles his head into the turning of hers. She doesn't ask to kiss him, doesn't warn him of it either, just turns her mouth into the shifting of his so strongly that he's slightly unbalanced in his pressing. His other palm curls into a fist against the table as she licks her tongue against his and the taste of tea is startling to him.

Earlier it had been the safety of coffee. Now it's all new.

She surprises him more often than he'd expected she really would.

"Kate." He can tell she likes the feeling of her name kissed onto her lips because the angling of her head goes sharp and steeper, following after him as he lifts his own.

"What?"

He keeps her head up with fingers to her throat, keeps her closely holding to him with pleased eyes and a smile that says she's legitimately enjoying every inch of the situation, "What the hell is going on with you tonight?"

"I'm sleepy." She shrugs at him, her usually widened up eyes slimming farther as she slowly inhales through her nose. "Can't be held accountable for my actions."

"I will always hold you accountable for your actions." His fingers wipe a line on her jaw, voice graveled out. "You know that."

And she looks a little perturbed that he'd be so simply rational, so realistic, so unfailingly Gibbs, "Maybe that's what wrong with me."

"That I expect you to be responsible?"

"Yeah, I guess. In a way." Her eyes are softening in color as she watches him shift back, turning his hips opposite at her side so that he can lean against the table but still face her. "You hold me to a higher standard. Constantly."

"Yeah, I do." There's a shrug in his strong shoulders that is nothing of apologetic, completely assured. "You started out on a remarkably different level."

"We were even once." Kate shrugs back just as evenly, letting her hand shift off the table to wipe knuckles along the worn in denim of his jeans. "Maybe I find it difficult being your subordinate when I know I'm capable of being your equal."

He gives her a patented glance of warning, "I never said you weren't."

"Capable or your equal?" Her wrist stretches back, laying the back of her hand flush to the side of his leg.

She more than just capable. She's been… She's his watchword.

The silent guiding he looks toward and always manages to find the right answer in.

He's grown used to that secondary conscience, that touchstone to balance. Too quickly become accustomed to having her eyes waiting for his glance.

"Capable." He tugs against the watch she hasn't removed, fingers tentatively slow as he lifts her hand loosely, letting her stretch her palm farther onto his leg with a smile.

Her fingers rub into fabric and the very movement seems both unconscious and unstoppable, "Because I'm too young and naïve to be your equal?"

"Sometimes, yes." He's once again completely unapologetic in his loose shrugging and she accepts it as his truth. "You need experience."

"Valid." Kate murmurs into finding the inner seam on his thigh, fidgeting her fingers against it.

"You need the lessons."

She nods a slowly made agreement, "Accepted."

"You need to stop." His hand clasps over her wrist and stalls the taunting of her fingers.

_Because I can't fucking think. _

She angles her head the same way she does when DiNozzo says something that grates on her, verges offensive. "Okay."

"Not because I didn't like it." He leans over her, keeping the words toned quiet but sure and purposefully gentle.

And there's still a tip to her that has her hair looking longer than he'd realized it had become, "Because you liked it too much?"

"Stop profiling me."

"That wasn't profiling." The grin she gives him is right back to where they started when she'd offered him a short order leave to lay his hands and mouth anywhere he damn well pleased. "That was just being a woman."

"Fair point." Gibbs nods a brief agreement before loosening the grip he still has tethered around the slimness of her wrist.

"No, I don't sleep in pants. I also don't walk around your house in my underwear."

"Damn shame." He hisses down against her mouth, her lips so easily parting under the insistent push of his tongue – she knew he'd be coming back around again. "Come to bed."

She makes a sound in her throat that he knows she doesn't mean to let him hear, "Gibbs."

And he lets himself smile because he knows she can't necessarily see it when he wipes it against her cheek, "You need to sleep."

"So do you."

Now, that's the tone of a woman who isn't all that worried about him walking away.

_So damn perfectly contrary._

"Then stop arguing with me, Kate."


	3. Chapter 3

"You want your own bed." he murmurs it over her quietly, studying how thinly dark her eyelids are as she tugs and twists the corner of a pillow farther under her head.

"This is fine." she just shrugs it deeper into the mattress he'd cleared off and quick stripped before laying down fresher sheets.

Her eyes go wide open to the darkened ceiling of his bedroom and he can still feel a tension in the frame of her as she wipes her fingers along her forehead, pressing into smooth skin. She hadn't asked why he'd had to toss his bed clean for her, just given him a familiar tip of the head that said she knew he spent too much time on his couch. He'd given her a boyish shrug and banked a shoulder in her direction – end of discussion. No questions later. And she'd graciously accepted a non-response as its very own response.

"Then close your eyes."

Her lips press together like she's not going to respond but he can see in the half shadows that she just can't seem to help herself, "Earlier you were telling me to keep them open."

"Stop fighting it." he rumbles a low laugh over her stubbornness, tapping against her nose playfully and catching the retaliatory swipe of her fingers for the effort.

"I'm not a puppy, Gibbs. Don't thwap my nose."

That perturbed little pouting is the exact reason he's never slapped her upside the head.

That and he can't bring himself to do so, regardless of what she's said or done.

That, and… she's his untouchable. Used to be?

_Technically, this is a whole lotta touching._

"I won't." he grins past how grumpily she tucks tighter into his chest, stretching farther into the way he's leaned up beside her, still in his jeans and t-shirt. "It makes you blush right down your throat."

She rolls her eyes up at him but she's smiling, her lips beautifully curved. "You're a tease."

"I like watching you blush." Mischief is the only thing that lives in his smile as he tugs down on the center of her shirt, fingers prying on the top hemline so that he can slope a glance against the edging of her creamy colored bra. "How far down does it go, Todd?"

Her uninhibited laughter ringing out from the center of his bed does something to his gut that is completely unprecedented, more than unexpected. The half erection, that's expected, accepted, unintentional but natural. It's the crackling hot drop of his stomach as he watches bemusement take over her lips that has him letting the shirt hem slide back into place as he possessively strokes his palm full against one of her breasts. He can't help watching the swaying back of her head as she exhales a sound of pleased relief, an appreciation for his slow fingers as her eyes slide closed. And he can't help smiling wider into the way her knee lifts into the shifting of her hips, bringing them closer to his as her hand rakes nails against his forearm. He keeps his movements slow, forcing himself to keep the touching light but persistent as he groans his nose down into the crook of her neck. She even smells warm and welcoming to him. How long has she smelled like a homecoming?

"That what you wanted? Huh?" She groans into how easily his voice turns from erotic to terrifying with just a breath and the ringing of his cell, the twist of it ranging lower into a threat. "I'm gonna kill him."

_Very slowly. With pleasure_.

She laughs again, the sound of it trouncing out a tease as the palm of her opposite hand skiffs up the short cropped hair at the back of his head, "You can't know it's - "

Kate quiets into the silent warning he gleans her way before lifting his cell from the table, his body a solid weight against the way he's still keeping her curled to the middle of the mattress.

"I'm gonna smack the hell out of you." She's angling her knee between his in an intentional tease and he lets a little growl into the words that's meant for her and she owns it with a silent laugh. "I told you to go home, DiNozzo."

He can feel the watching, avoids turning his head into the way she's closely studying him as he listens to DiNozzo. She lifts her hand to the side of his face and he instantly knows that this conversation needs to be short – because he'd much rather enjoy the fact that she's wiping her fingertips along the edge of his hairline than have a three am chat with a giddily weary Tony. He leans into the twist of her fingers tweaking along the curve of his ear, shying into the teasing touch as he forces air into his lungs.

"All right. Go home." He's not even all that sure where the other man was in the conversation, but he knows he's already got all the information he needs. "Late morning tomorrow, all right? Get some sleep."

"Petty Officer Leighton is in custody?" Kate's murmur is an ending of some sort, a resolution and relief as he exhales the breath he's been holding onto.

He tosses the phone noisily back to the table and drops his mouth onto her collarbone in the same shift of movement, lets his tongue ride the line of her clavicle as he digs down into her, "He is."

"Where are they - "

"Kate," the fabric of her shirt, pliant but tight, is bunched into his hand as he lets the growl off into the side of her throat, "close your eyes. Go to sleep."

"I don't want to sleep, Gibbs." She's proving it with the way she's managed to tug into the hair at the crown of his skull.

_Yes, ma'am. Copy that. Me either._

Still… "You need to."

"You're not my boss." she tweaks against his ear before he lifts a bemused smile over her, head angling into the way he studies her tired eyes.

"On the contrary, Agent Todd - "

"I mean in this." Her interruption is soft but leading in its sudden swaying affection.

Gibbs blinks a searching glance over her features, "In what?"

"I'm not completely sure." There's no real concern in her tone, though. It's not that she's nervous. It's that she hasn't seemed to completely figure it out yet. Judgment reserved upon accruing more information. That's his smart girl.

"Exactly." he nods his lips back down along her throat, kissing the words to the skin he's already decided he'll soon mark a claiming on. "Sleep on it."

* * *

He watches her descend the stairs with a still dipped jaw and hooded eyes, intentionally slowing his hands and arms in the midst of the distraction. Her shoulders are lifted, the muscles of her arms bunched up close to her ribs. The very way she's carrying herself makes it seem as though she's cold. He realizes then that he's drawn a chilled sweat up on his skin and through his shirt, roughed his own muscles past the scream of exhaustion by forcing them to keep moving.

"I win." Her voice is just as soft as the sound of her feet against the stairs and he aches into slowing his movements, letting the sander go still but keeping his arms up to punish himself into pain for no real reason at all.

He cocks his head into watching her step full into the basement, not at all ashamed that he's enjoying the first sight of her in a place he hadn't necessarily ever expected to find her in, "You very often do."

"Made a bet with myself." Kate's arms curl under her breasts, tightening to lace her own ribs as she steps toward his work space, her head tipped in studying it instead of looking toward him. "Boat and bourbon over a woman in your bed. You're predictable, Gibbs."

"You seem to think."

She smirks into his response even as she still ignores the pinning of his glance, "She'll be beautiful."

He just shrugs his forearms into the wood as he stretches his back, letting his glance slope down and back up the front of her, "She already is."

She cocks him a slimmed glance that says even she can't believe he's dropped a DiNozzo worthy line on her but it still makes her smile wide enough that she embarrassedly shakes her glance away from his smile. He revels in that turn of her head, the one that still makes her seem innocent and young and flushes her a charmed pink.

There are plenty of things she just can't quite manage to hide from him.

Liking that he thinks she's pretty is just the next thing down on the list he keeps tallied in his head.

"Why'd you come down here?" She's got her palms up flat to braced boat ribs across from him, pressing between the wood to lean into his shifting attention. "You needed the habitual? Something ritualistic?"

He just shrugs, bites into his cheek, refuses to admit he'd had to stop watching her sleep.

"You changed your mind."

Gibbs shakes his head tightly at the dry and bankrupt tone of her voice, "That's not necessarily true."

He'd been trying to, though. Trying to talk himself out of it. Sorta.

Unfortunately, she had an arsenal of pros that usurped his three primary cons:

_1\. I'm an asshole._

_2\. I'm your boss. _

_3\. I'm your asshole boss._

"You chose a half made boat and bourbon over a woman in your bed."

"I have self control, Kate. I don't need to ravish you first thing." His entire body leans into the middle of the frame, unconscious of shifting the smattering of tools she's got her hand pressed down beside.

"You don't?" she bites out on a smile and he swallows down the realization that he's shying the tools away from her, angling edges and points toward himself rather than in her direction. "That's disappointing."

His palm presses flat between them as he angles his jaw back and forth, "Kate."

"Are you sure? That you don't need to?" She's squinting the accusation like a near threat but he can still see the haunted taunt of a smile trying to curve on her lips.

"I shouldn't have let you sleep. Now you're rested." Gibbs points at her quickly, his shoulders swelling an ache that's starting to wrap itself down his spine, "And you're not gonna shut up."

"You knew I'd follow you down here." she surmises easily, blinking the sleepiness out of her eyes as she shrugs.

"So?"

"You needed the proverbial high ground." The short height of her seems suddenly taller as she presses off the frame and swings her steps in the opposite direction, giving him a wonderful view of her ass as she moves toward the tool bench. "Shoring yourself up?"

"You're never gonna let up, are you?" His movement off the frame is slower, more calculated in its shifting.

The laughter that comes off her is comfortable and breathy as she tosses back a quick smile before continuing to step away, "You knew that from the start. I don't feel sorry for you."

"I stopped seeing you as an available woman when I handed you the badge."

_Well… that's some prime bullshit, Jethro. But good effort._

"That's bullshit, Gibbs." She snaps it over her shoulder as she fingers one of the chisels and nimbly lifts it for closer inspection.

He snorts through his nose as he shakes his head, stepping closer with a lowered tone, "Watch yourself, Agent Todd."

"Grow a pair, Gunny." She's maybe the first woman to wield a mortise chisel at his chest and flippantly wave it closer while mouthing off at him.

_Now, hell, that's sexy. And… slightly terrifying._

Gibbs leans against her and curls his palm against the way she's holding the handle looser than she should be, weighing down against her hold as his other hand finds and tugs the knotted up tie of his own pajama pants. "You wearin' that infamous jock strap under these?"

"I'm not wearing anything under these." Her tone is so sweetly conversational, so supposedly innocent but nowhere damn near.

The sound he makes in his throat in response is somewhere between first strike and ending surrender, eyes thinning into the way he lays a look down the front of her as he lets the confiscated chisel clatter to the table.

"Why would I?" As though he's completely remiss in thinking otherwise, as though it's a foregone conclusion that she wouldn't dare put anything between her skin and (something of) him. "They're yours."

Her hand rises into his silence, tugs him leaning closer with a pull against his shirt that is so sure he can feel the decision making in the flex of her wrist, "Can I keep them?"

"Hell no." He grins his eyes up to her hushing smile.

"Please?"

"I said 'no'." He finally laughs into her playful chippiness, shaking his head into a full blown smile that makes her eyes flare wider in pride. "Are you gonna shut the hell up?"

"I keep hoping that if I distract you that - "

"You can't distract my focus, Kate. Not in this." What she doesn't realize is that he's two steps ahead and his fingers are carefully stretched into shifting tools back on the bench, edging them away from her with a cautiously flat slide of his palm.

She doesn't notice his advance because she's too busy studying his face as her head shakes back and forth. "What is this, Gibbs?"

"A long time coming." His hands flex tightly into her ribs, prying up against her weight in a way that draws her palms along his forearms in surprise as he jacks her hard up onto the work bench. "You're not my equal, Kate."

She looks down on him, an embittered smile pursing her lips, "As you often remind me."

"You have the potential to be better than."

She almost looks sad, as though he's completely shifted the foundation of her reasoning.

He knows he's not the sort of man to fling compliments around but, hell, she doesn't need to seem so completely shocked silent when he manages to give her a good one.

"You'd say the same thing about Tony." she shakes it off embarrassedly as she fingers the fabric of his shirt in a fidgeting that he can't stand, catching her fingers still to draw her attention back.

"Yeah, I would." He nods tightly, once, just once. "Tony's different."

"How so?"

"Tony doesn't want it like you do. Doesn't need to prove it. He likes what he does and he's damn good at it." He smirks into the surprised look she gives him at the unmitigated compliment. "How many female Secret Service agents have made _the_ Presidential detail before age thirty five? C'mon, I know you know."

"Five." Her admission is soft and shy and he knows it's true just by the rise of blushed pride in her cheeks.

"Including you?"

Kate nods slowly into his watching, biting along her lip to make him swallow down hard because, generally, it always does - and she likes watching it happen. "Yes."

"In the history of the Secret Service?"

Her smile breaks down over him, "Yes."

He nods slowly into the arching of his brow, "How many agents have bypassed my probationary period in six weeks?"

"I have absolutely no idea, Gibbs." she's exhaling the words into the way he kisses her once, and then again, and keeps doing it to draw her leaning lower.

"Very few." It's pressed against her lips.

Kate draws her head back a fraction, letting her jaw tip as she scrutinizes him, "Including me?"

"Including you."

"In the history of Special Agent Jethro Gibbs?" She's so damn proud of herself that she can't help the grin that takes over her lips and he just exhales a half smirk in response as he shakes his head closer to hers. "So this is just… more training?"

"No." he laughs against her mouth and he can't figure out exactly why except that it makes her lips curve on yet another smile. "This is just a very bad idea."

Her argument is just her tongue catching his as she shifts her head into kissing him, stroking the taste of long ago bourbon off him and sighing into it, "Are you talking me out of this?

"Just reminding you of the facts."

He shrugs away from her and the way her mouth has his tired eyes burning as he blinks low. His back turns between her legs as a sort of unplanned test of defenses and he's simultaneously pleased and annoyed at the realization she really has none against him at the moment. Because she draws her knees tight against his hips and her hands are slow but comfortable as they wipe against his shoulder blades.

But then… she doesn't need to be defensive.

He should have gauged her position.

Because he's damn sure given her the high ground.

"All it tells me is that you're more stringent than the United States Secret Service, Gibbs. I already knew that." The heat of her mouth leans along the back of his ear and he can't seem to stop her right arm from caging up under his own so that she can spread a palm to the flat of his chest.

Her familiar hand spanning the center of his chest seems, at once, foreign and deliciously domestic. "You don't know what you're doing."

She's becoming the safety on the gun he's made of himself and he knows he should stop it from happening but it's been a long time since he's been at a rest. And he can't help but realize that, regardless of who they are, she's choosing to be the pause button. Pushing to be that safety switch. Trying to guard him, maybe.

_That's a thankless and impossible job, sweetheart. Quit while you're ahead. _

"I know exactly what I'm doing." she answers his silent revelry with a rub of her fingers against the jut of his skull directly behind his left ear. "Why'd you offer me the job?"

"I didn't want you to go anywhere else."

He very nearly wholly trusts her to be his safety – and not the way he'd trust DiNozzo or Mike or any of his brothers (except that, really, he can't, with any of them). This is on a whole other level, in any case. He'd never admit to needing that guarding hand. The grace of her being _her_ is that she doesn't even try to make him admit it. She inexplicably balances being the gun hand, the safety, trigger pull and the fucking bullet. And he doesn't quite completely understand how she manages it.

Her fingers are rubbing his sternum as her mouth wipes the side of his neck, teeth and tongue grazing skin, "Because of my potential?"

_Because you're the first shot, first kill, Katie. Bolt-action-beautiful. _

"Naw." She's gotta stop doing that, because it's entrenching him into tipping his head closer to her mouth. "Because of your sass."

"You liked me then."

Her tongue curves the shell of his ear and he can feel the pinioned snap of tension in his wrist as he lifts his hand and digs into the dry darkness of her hair, stilling her tightly. She's gotta stop. She has to just _stop it_ or he's going to hurt her in more ways than one. Starting with fucking her fast and hard against the table and ending with a kill shot to their relationship, in whatever incarnation.

Gibbs lets his head angle into hers slowly, "I like you now."

"Then why not just give me your number instead of a job?" her whisper is quietly curious, no other edge or accusation. "You're not a shy man."

"And what if I had? Would you have called?" he asks as he fingers the darkness of her hair before loosening his grip on it, half turning to glance back into her watching.

Oh, yeah. That look. She would have.

"Probably."

And he would have enjoyed her for as long as humanly possible. In as many ways as he could have managed before she whacked him in the head with something hard and stalked away on high style heels. He's gotta stop putting himself between the legs of beautifully dressed but attractively volatile women.

_Sure, when there's an avalanche in Hell._

"And then what?"

She thins him a scrutinizing glance, avoiding stepping into what she can already see is his point-making-trap, "You tell me."

"Dinner and a drink after, maybe? Bring you down here? Some woodworking?" He's learning what the color of lust looks in Kate Todd's eyes and he's ready to admit that in this particular lighting (or lack thereof), it's fucking phenomenally coppered. "I'm extraordinarily good at making a woman feel appreciated, Kate. Because I appreciate women. I'm old fashioned. Doesn't make me a chauvinist."

"You are, a little." she counters quickly but shrugs it away. "What else?"

"A lot of really good sex." He smirks unabashedly into the disbelieving tease of a noise she lays over him before tugging against the pants she's wearing. "And you would have ended up with these probably."

"I'm still not seeing why this was the better option."

"Six months later and you woulda been gone. Maybe longer. You're strong. You'd tough it out long as you could." He navigates the turn back to face her slowly, keeping her legs hooked close by the skimming of his palms before he lets his hands rise and find their way under her shirt. "You'd hate me at the end."

"You're not as impossible as you think you are." Her head shakes minutely, as though she's just verbally slapping Tony around in the middle of the bullpen while his hands curve on her rib cage.

"This way you're still here." He ignores her strident accusation, fingers ribbing against the lower line of her bra, "And you don't hate me."

"I can't hate you, Gibbs." she tells him quietly, honestly, her breathing softening out. "I've tried."

A derisive snort breaks off him quickly as one palm flattens out against her stomach and presses still, "Have you really tried, Caitlin? Because it's not that hard. You don't know what you're doing."

"But I do." Her voice is forceful but her eyes are so very bright under the sickly yellow of the light that's clipped to the shelf behind her head. "Stop training me, Gunny. I'm not your soldier."

"No, you're not. Are you?" He's watching her still features, assuring himself of what he already knows as she studies his eyes.

"No."

He digs her hips forward with pressing palms and then a pull against one leg that has her knee riding back up against him same as earlier, his mouth nipping at hers briefly, "This is your very last chance, Kate."

"I realize that." The slowly cradling smile she gives him is guileless and all undeniable pleasure, her heel digging into the back of his leg in a rake of impatience. "Carry on, Marine."


	4. Chapter 4

In general, he's still very nearly verging on sociopathic. It's been trained and ingrained in him. Stripped of any emotional weakness, given an order, removed of guilt. Removed from empathy and firmly placed in a position of forced apathy. He cannot care if he's to do his job correctly. He cannot divorce himself from what he has become - from what all his training has created in him – if he is to succeed.

"Gibbs." But he's not that self when he's got his mouth between her breasts and the capably strong spread of each palm against her bare arching back. "Jesus Christ, you're killing me."

And he's not that self when he laughs heat against her clavicle, unashamedly letting her tug into the run of his hair. "Now you're breaking commandments? Your mother would be ashamed of you."

"My mother would smack my ass and have me doing penance." She's absolutely sure it's the first time she's ever held his face in both hands this way and it's so completely and strangely (perfectly) new to her. "Holy hell, get up here."

When he smiles, that moment just before he kisses whatever he can catch of her, he's just the goodness that gets quietly buried in the sand, muck, mud, dirt, dry land, right before the mission. Before the operation commences and he becomes just a mechanization. He's just a weapon, that's all he sees himself as sometimes.

"Hi there." Not this time - she won't allow it. "You have gorgeous eyes."

_More like overkill to the ovaries, Sweet Christ in heaven._

He flinches a little into the statement and she doesn't know why but it makes his head bend down so that he can wipe his mouth back over her collarbone, a growl coming off him that reverberates down her ribcage as he pries her closer and bites down against skin. She lets him graze teeth and tongue against her collarbone, lets his mouth travel higher as she skirts her hands up under his shirt and catches against his ribs. A seethed breath heats against her jaw as he pulls her even closer, the force of his hands and arms bending her into forced arch.

When she drives her jaw down, runs her mouth back to his, he cages her back so hard onto the bench that a shunting sound of surprise catches in her throat. She lets him swallow it as he answers her attempt at force with the sturdier and stronger show of his own. He's got her locked up and she can't find any particular reason to fight it because he's the best laid trap she's stumbled over in long awhile.

He's nipping his teeth against her bottom lip like he owns it, "We need to take this upstairs."

"Why?" She pouts her palms higher under the fabric of his shirt, letting her nails dig marks on him that lead his hips jutting her harder back.

She's eighty percent sure there's some sort of handle jammed right up her –

"Kate." His hands catch her up closer against his erection and he cocks her a glance that tends to repeat whenever she says something that he finds redundant or just too close to being annoyingly spot on. "Condom."

"Birth control." She waves off into sliding flat palms farther up the run of his chest, enjoying how completely solid he is in the way he leans weight into the touch.

"Kate." He gives up a groan to the way her mouth is rising on his stubbled jaw, the nails of one hand scraping a line down center sternum. "I have a bed."

"And you've had sex in stranger places, Gibbs. I'd put money on it."

There's a sharp shake to his head that says he's not gonna give on this, not gonna budge, not gonna let her win, "Next time. I want - "

"You don't even sleep in your bed." Laughter is in her voice and it lathes off into quietness as he catches her face up, forcing her perfectly still with both sturdy palms.

"Caitlin." He's used her full first name more in the span of two days than he has since they've met – and maybe she likes the way he claims it back away from the unnamed man who recently broke it over her like a lascivious threat. "I want you in my bed."

_You win. I give. Uncle. Surrender. Big-damn-white-flag. Armistice. Anschluss._

But then, he's so often right, she is stubborn… "Tell me why first."

"Because it's _my_ bed," Even sitting above him keeps her smaller as he leans farther and lays his forehead pressing to hers, his eyes gliding closed as he exhales admission, "and I want you naked in it."

"Well, it's a reason." She grins her eyes shut into his stillness.

"It's a damn good one, Todd." He's back to drawing small but persistent kisses off her lips and he finally loosens up his hands from her face, letting them drop back down so that he can grip her thighs and dig in. "You belong there."

_You charming son of a bitch. You knew that'd kill me. _

Damn him to hell.

"You keep delaying me."

"Kate," she makes a noise of pleased surprise into his jaw as he jerks her thighs tight on him, leveraging her off the table and up into the way she's bracing on his shoulders as she kisses roughly back against his sudden sway of forcefulness, "I'm making it last longer than five minutes. You really got a problem with that?"

"Not in the least." She smirks down over the lift of his head as he shifts her higher against his hips, completely at a loss as to how the hell she's actually gotten into this craved position.

_I could live in this position. Hell with that, I could die happy in this position. _

He answers the bemused smile, "Then shut up and do what I tell you to do."

"Yes, sir." She lingers her lips along his jaw, lining the kisses up and toward his ear as his hands shift her weight tighter into his center, a hand flush to her back while the other strokes against her ass in a way that has her eyes rolling shut.

"Don't - "

"Call you 'sir'. Don't mess with your coffee." Playfully she ticks off the orders with her fingers against the back of his neck, tapping sweated skin while she kisses along his ear and lets her lips wipe down the side of his neck. "Don't bait my boss. Certainly don't kiss him when he's absolutely covered in sawdust and - "

"Don't stop doing that." The gritted groan of his voice makes her lift her head with a surprised grin, biting into her bottom lip as she looks over his laxed jaw.

"You like that?" her voice sounds astonished even to her and she laughs through her nose as she bites on a smile.

"Is there a man on the planet who wouldn't like a woman like you doing that?"

"A fairly large cross section of the population, yes." Her fingers wipe his throat as he settles her to the floor. "Mostly homosexuals. Men who prefer blondes. Or redheads."

His eyes thin conspiratorially before he slaps lightly against her thigh and jerks his head toward the staircase, "Get upstairs, smartass."

"Why?"

His hands curl her up and turn her sharply, the angle of his head leaning his face into her hair as he drives her forward with his hips, "Because I'm done waiting."

Kate smirks into the rub of his jaw on the side of her head, letting him lead her steps forward to the stairs, "No more talking yourself out of it?"

"No more givin' a damn." Light kisses against the back of her head are miming the rhythm of their steps but his hands are intent on guiding her in a single specific and demanding direction. "Get upstairs. Bed. Now."

"Where I belong?"

"Naw." The full break of his laughter against the back of her head is a prize of a sort, one that even she hadn't completely realized she'd been playing to win. "I'm not stepping into that one. I'm not DiNozzo."

"Thank God."

* * *

She suddenly understands, while he's pulling another long moan out of her, how he's managed to get three (four) presumably intelligent women to marry him, regardless of how much of a bastard he can be. It's the proudly boyish grinning he flashes at her as she shudders out a ragged breath, her fingers so tightly curled on his arm that she's digging crescented marks into the soft pulse of his wrist. The slowness of his fingers as he teases another jut of her hips up after she's already come by wiping against her sensitive clit and laughing into her growl of warning. It's the fact that she assumes he's pulling away and instead he just lifts his head and interestedly watches her body arch hard as he drives two fingers back up into her and lets her muscles clamp around them.

It's the fact that he could have fucked her anywhere he wanted and be done, satisfied, sated. But he'd stripped her back on his bed, kept his pants on, and started working her over with a bemused smile, terrifyingly knowing fingers and bright beautiful eyes.

Then he'd silently put his mouth between her legs and it had been crystal fucking clear.

"You're a bastard." She soothes the accusation by rolling her fingertips up and down the back of his neck, arching into the way he's hushing her rapid breathing by sliding slowly back up over her.

"I already told you that." His mouth has a way of finding the weakest point between her shoulder and throat and laying damp heat there, his hand pressing her hips flat again as he stretches up beside her and teases her thighs apart again. "C'mere. I want you to come again."

"Stop teasing me, Gibbs." She realizes that she's shivering, that her hand is shaky as she presses solid into the center of his bare chest.

"I'm not teasing you." He kisses her harder than she expects and she lets him own the moaning he justly deserves, tasting his lips and tongue as his full palm presses her thigh into his groin, "I'm watching you."

She smiles smugly, knows he can see it as she lets her eyes close and she shifts her bare leg tighter into the rub of his crotch, "Learning anything, Agent Gibbs?"

"Plenty." he chuckles over her, letting his erection drive harder into her leg as he cups his hand between her thighs and lets one fingertip dip into her just slightly.

"That why you watch me all day?" she asks past the sudden upswing of her lungs searching for more air, her hands quickly pulling at him to lean closer. "To learn things?"

"Not the only reason." he admits, letting her hands push at the clothing he still has on, smirking into how intent she suddenly seems on making sure he's not going anywhere but back between her legs.

She makes a small sound in her throat as she draws his hand from between them, curling his damp fingers into her palm as she pulls. "Tell me?"

He lets her pull on him this time.

Same as she lets him press so closely over and around her any other time.

"Please?"

He can usually ignore the pure unintentional pouting that tends to twist her lips to the side or tuck her bottom lip under white teeth when she's frustrated. He can usually avoid watching it happen because he's come to inherently know when it's coming. But this time she's managed to silently and quickly shift him from his clothing and between her legs and when she loosens on his fingers he lays his palm flat to the mattress and drops his eyes closed into the stroke of her hand. His palms stay flat to her sides while his hips drive into the run of light fingers against his length, a groan grifting off his lungs and eyes opening as he watches her teeth scrape her lip.

Gibbs lays his lips down near the corner of her mouth, daring her to turn her head into the words, "You think other men don't notice that I keep my eyes on you?"

Pouting again. But playfully this time. With her palm stroking him harder. "That's not fair."

"Why, Kate? Why isn't it fair? Didn't I bring you here?" He takes a kiss from her, nips the end of it off her bottom lip. "Don't I take care of you? Aren't I right now?"

She ignores the slightly chauvinistic twist to his words because, frankly, the way he's saying it has her moaning as she arches into his kissing.

"You're the reason Tony's never actually made a move on me."

He's leaning laughter along her throat, nudging her jaw up with his nose so that he can nip along soft skin "Did you want him to?"

"God, no, but - "

"You were mine. Soon as you walked into my office." His fingers pull lightly at her wrist, forehead riding her collarbone as he replaces her hand with his own, and he lifts his glance back to hers as he teases himself into wetness. "He knew that. Knows that."

She feels the whimper break off her and turns her head into his throat, letting him lean completely around her – just like he does in the daylight. "Don't tease me."

"I am not teasing you." he whispers the words perfunctorily down the side of her head. "Am I?"

"No."

"Jesus, Kate. I make you this wet?" It's a breathy surprise that nears laughter as he exhales, shaking his head down over her watching. "What am I doing?"

She can feel how cockily she smiles as she lifts her head into finding a kiss from him, completely unashamed of searching it out. "Breaking your own rules."

"Why?" There's a tone in his voice that nears what sometimes echoes off the interrogation room microphone, but softer, more inquisitive.

And she shrugs her arms up against his shoulders, hooking a leg against him as she squints him a glance that she's seen on his face often enough. "For me."

"Yeah." he says it unaffectedly, just (surprisingly) easily agrees. "I am."

There's no teasing left and he's tired of talking and if there's anything she's ever been able to read off him it's when he's simply finished with a conversation. He's never been shy about letting her know when being silent is a better option and she can see the quiet rise of silence in his eyes as he searches over her face. She just smiles into the quietness, wiping her fingers against short trimmed hair and the back of his ear before he downs his mouth against hers and lets his weight shift. His pressuring palms shift her legs and hips and she lets him make the movements because it just makes the angling of him into her seem excruciatingly slow. His patience in this is… more than she'd expected.

Which is, she realizes, exactly what she should have expected of him.

He's tracing fingertips against the thigh she has hooked up against his hip, the groan that leaves his lungs pressing her down deeper into the mattress, "Christ, Kate."

Her palms wipe down the slow slackening of his cheeks, letting his head lean into her hands and down against her collarbone as he shifts a little farther. "Gonna make it past five minutes, Gibbs?"

The taunting lifts his head and he shunts his hips forward, driving deeper into her and watching the way the shift arches her spine as her palm presses into his chest.

_Such a deliciously dangerous smile… smug son of a bitch._

"You doubt me?" He's got her hand wrapped up in his own and she watches his lips part slightly as he slopes their combined fingers down her stomach and between her legs, his head lifting with a taunting smile, "Huh?"

"No."

She's learned not to.

He's trained her better than she'd even realized.

"Good." He's still smirking as he rubs his lips to hers, aiming her fingers against her clit and keeping the both of them touching. "Now, shut the hell up."

The next sound she makes is a whimper as he drives tightly into her and he takes it up into his own mouth, tongue on hers as she curls her palms up his back, bracing on his shoulders.

* * *

He's fairly sure that a naked Caitlin Todd stretching off his mattress is not the finish he'd planned to a seemingly unending day. He's also pretty positive that he doesn't give a shit that the day hasn't panned out the way he'd figured.

_This is better. So much better. _

"Don't go anywhere." he murmurs after her, letting his eyes follow the petite stretch of her as she bends and nicks his shirt off the floor, her fingers catching up in the fabric as she turns him a soft glance.

"I'm not." She shakes it off as she tugs the fabric over her shoulders and down and he thinks maybe the hemline cutting along mid-toned-thigh is exactly how the shirt was made to fit.

Gibbs cocks his head into his hand, letting his spine stretch as he studies her, watches the way she's taming dark hair from her face. "It's a direct order, Todd."

"I'm not." she repeats on a full wattage smile, obviously debating a step closer or a step away. "I promise. I'm just going to the bathroom, Gunny."

"You're right, ya know?" He stretches down onto the mattress, letting his face land into the pillow with a ragged drop of his head and shoulders.

Her knuckles tentatively press just along his lower ribcage and he grins into the laundry smell of the fabric. "About?"

Gibbs lifts his head only enough to mumble off to the side, "I do sorta like it."

"I know."

* * *

She can't help but smile into the way he's fallen asleep. Face down and hips askew and the fresh sheet ragged down on the lowest sling of his back so that she can let her eyes trace the line of his spine. It's so much more relaxed and open and vulnerable than she'd expected. Still, he shoves his face into the bunched up pillow like he needs to suffocate in order to breathe easily.

"Gibbs." She knows better than to startle him, her voice stretching over him as she wipes against a tensed shoulder. There's a scar that jags below one flexed shoulder blade and she apologetically moves her fingers against the ridged skin, weighing pressure against what her single moment of a mistake had left on him.

He wakes just enough to reach his hand against the stretch of hers and jerk her closer.

And she doesn't argue with the way he just silently and sleepily pulls her under the full stretch of him and buries his breathing into the side of her neck.

* * *

Tony's waiting at her desk, intentionally fiddling with her things just to get a rise out of her as she slows her steps, "I wouldn't let the boss man see that."

She just gives him a glance and a shrug, "See what?"

"The love bite you've got right," his fingers flick at the hair along her right shoulder and throat and she slaps his fingers away reflexively, "here."

"Get off me." She slaps again, shoving him a fraction farther away from her as she drops her paperwork to her desk. "Why would he care?"

She would usually ignore the less-than-subtle implication. Let it blush her cheeks before turning herself away from the possibility that his attraction to her could possibly match hers for him. But she's gotta test this theory. She has to know that it wasn't just a sleepless fluke of some sort. And Tony's always been more perceptive than she'd like.

He makes a better barometer than he realizes – which makes her shoulder rise a little in guarding.

"Might get jealous." he winces the words to the side with a glance along her throat, his hips leading back so that he can relax on the edge of her desk.

Gibbs was right.

_He usually is, Kate. _

Tony knows she's off limits to him. He knows other men should be annexed too.

He knows that a mark left along her collarbone is exactly the sort of thing that Jethro Gibbs would notice had he not been the one to intentionally leave it there.

"Don't be ridiculous. Are you?" she taunts into the realization that he's been the long term victim of, possibly, one of the most impressive cock blocks in recent NCIS history. "Jealous, Tony?"

He pulls a face at the playful way she leans closer, intentionally lowering her voice toward flirtatious. "Or are you trying to make me blush?"

DiNozzo just gives her a shrug as his back straightens, his body still leaned into the front of the desk, "You sleep at all last night?"

"A little." She shrugs at him amiably, letting a smile tip her lips. "You?"

"Yeah, a bit." Tony grins back automatically into her humor. "You're smirking, Kate."

She broadens the smile, letting it dimple as she nods toward his desk, "Go away now."

"You're smirking." he repeats quickly, pressing up to stand but not shifting any farther as he wags a finger in her face. "Katie-Cat got the cream. Meeee-ow."

"Ya know…Tony?" Her voice whispers low enough that he's unintentionally leaning into her to hear it.

"What?"

Kate just blinks as she shrugs her jaw up a little higher, "I'm just distracting you."

"Because?"

The slap comes up against the back of his skull and bounces his eyes shut and she snorts a laugh into the shift Gibbs makes as he continues around the both of them. "You don't need to help him put his foot down his throat, Kate."

She catches the half smile he passes back at her even as he swings around his desk, her shoulders lifting lightly once again, "Sometimes I just can't help baiting him."

* * *

She thought maybe it'd be difficult to act like nothing had happened.

He makes it easy, though. Doesn't hold back, doesn't favor her, doesn't pull any punches or soften his tone.

He is, undeniably, rudely, sharply, Jethro Gibbs.

_And still damn gorgeous… _

"You get everything you need?" His eyes rise from the camera in her hands as he pockets his cell phone, jaw lifting into the question. "Satisfied, Kate?"

She shrugs at him, keeps her tone blank, "Mostly."

His bright eyes thin as his head angles slowly, the scrutiny of his glance making her shoulders tight as he leans his stolid jaw forward, "What else could you possibly need, Agent Todd?"

It's barely perceptible – the fraction of a smirk that lives more in his eyes than on his mouth.

She's seen that millisecond once or twice in the last couple of days.

She's learning to find it. He's training her to see it.

"A little more time."

He grins into the nod of his head as he starts away from her, his fingers strafing on her arm as he heads from the door in the cramped apartment turned crime scene, "I'll give you another five minutes."

She's absolutely looking forward to that.


End file.
